Fear that man who fears not God.
Back in his early days, horror-thriller writer Dean Koontz was a significantly trippier writer than he is now. And, yes, I know he’s still pretty trippy these days. But he’d never put out a book like this these days. I kind of don’t want to give it much of a plot summary because it’s a book every reader should experience for themselves. Suffice it to say that it is, at first, a somewhat typical amnesiac thriller; a man awakens alone on board a spaceship with no memory of who he is, where he is or where he came from. Meanwhile, across the galaxy, a businessman hides a terrifying secret, a secret of a strange being held prisoner because there is nothing else to do with such a being but to hold it prisoner. These two men, along with a couple of other ne’er do wells are on a collision course and, in a galaxy where the ability to commit violence has been bred out of all civilized races, this strange amnesiac . . . may be the last human in the galaxy able to kill. Over about a hundred and eighty lightning paced pages, Koontz unspools a wild and wooly story that is pulp adventure, scientific dissection of religion, thought-provoking philosophical exercise and a somewhat angry cry directed at the universe as a whole. Religious readers, bring your thickest skin; Koontz is purposely crafting a thought experiment that is quite literally blasphemous. Now, is the book a full-on masterpiece? No, I’d say not. Koontz does a great job setting up his main character with a final task that seems absolutely impossible; he then does a pretty terrible job coming up with a way out of. The final chapter is pretty nonsensical and ends the book on something of a downer, not because it’s sad or dark, but because it feels like a cheat on the reader. Still, it’s a fast read and a fascinating one as well. What a thrill-ride. 3 ½ stars.
tl;dr – pulp adventure, philosophical thought-experiment, religious exploration; wildly entertaining, fast-paced novel stumbles at the end, but still delivers a fantastic and fascinating story. 3 ½ stars.